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It’s Crunch Time: Arbitration Deadline

The next important deadline in the world of baseball, general managers must decide by the end of this upcoming Monday whether to extend arbitration to their free agents. Ian Browne explains arbitration pretty well in his report on redsox.com:

Players who are offered arbitration must inform the club of their decision by the end of December 7. Players who accept arbitration become contractually bound to the team for the following season.

In Jason Varitek’s case, who is the Sox’s only Type A free agent, it is almost certain that Varitek would reject this arbitration offer because he would rather a multiyear deal. This is essentially the motivation for Epstein because should another team sign Varitek (which won’t happen because THEO IS GOING TO RE-SIGN HIM) the Red Sox would receive two draft picks.

So here’s what I’m wondering:

Does this mean that Theo doesn’t want to re-sign Varitek because he knows that Tek is going to reject arbitration?

What happens if a player is not offered arbitration?

The only Type B free agent that the Red Sox have is Paul Byrd, if they offer arbitration to him, the Red Sox would get one draft pick if another team signs him. It is unclear if Byrd would accept or deny the arbitration. If he accepted, it could create a problem because the Sox don’t necessarily have room for him in their starting rotation, so it could very well be that Theo will not offer him arbitration.

As for the club’s other free agents, they are not ranked so even if they were offered arbitration, they rejected and went to another team, the Sox wouldn’t get any draft picks. These “unranked” free agents include: Mark Kotsay, Alex Cora, Sean Casey, Mike Timlin, Curt Schilling, Bartolo Colon, and David Ross.

Now, the Jason Varitek Situation is becoming more confusing. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

I love this deadline.
It usually results in a jump-start of the free agency period. The draftpick compensation holds a lot of teams back from signing Type A’s and B’s because they don’t want to give up picks.
Everything comes more into focus when teams actually know what they have to lose/gain.

I can’t imagine the RS won’t sign Varitek. I know they’ve let some veterans walk in previous years, but I bet they’ll come to a satisfactory conclusion with him and Boras. Wouldn’t you guess he wants to stay, even if he doesn’t get the deal he’s looking for?

Hard to imagine the Sox without Varitek. He wouldn’t look right in another uniform. This is a curious position because of his place on the club but the tough season he had last year. I’d look for him to bounce back some in 2009, but a multi-year deal could be hard to get done. We don’t have much luck with Boras in down in Atlanta.

I sure hope the Sox get Tek locked up. Sounds like the Padres won’t offer Trevor arbitration…*sob* They are being so rude to him I can’t believe it. Well, hopefully he will go to a team that will respect him. YAY! There will be news in the next few days!http://kaybee.mlblogs.com

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